← Leading Organizations That Matter
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Ray Spadoni
Foreign welcome to Leading Organizations that Matter, a podcast about how we find meaning, purpose, and impact in our work. I'm your host, Ray Spadoni, and today's topic is Building a Culture of Accountability starts with during strategic planning initiatives and organizational assessment consulting assignments, I often hear managers state a desire to create more accountability within their culture. My ears always perk up when I hear this, and I know immediately to start to dig a little deeper because it's not uncommon that what you see is not what you get on this particular issue. So sometimes more accountability speaks to a desire for there to be a more effective performance management process and mindset in that organization. In other words, managers who sometimes make this statement are essentially saying that they themselves are not exercising sufficient discipline in order to drive results. Sometimes more accountability might suggest a culture of conflict avoidance and discomfort with having to contend with the underperformance of direct reports. And so the lack of accountability essentially means that there are diminished or no consequences to the underperformance. Needless to say, that's that's problematic. Sometimes more accountability indicates a certain what I describe and have written quite a bit about is a confluence of chaos which results in the persistence of an ongoing spinning of plates mentality and phenomenon where managers and staff are constantly in a state of putting out fires, attending to the squeakiest wheels, sticking their fingers in the holes in the dam and you know any other management cliche that you care to apply here? Lack of accountability can indicate that no one is focused on driving results because survival mode reigns supreme and everyone there basically accepts that fact. Each of these scenarios requires a different and tailored solution, but in my experience, one of the best ways to jumpstart an organization toward improved accountability in their culture is to change the manner in which budgets are derived. The classic back in the day budgeting process was very much a top down driven one, with the CEO and CFO determining the bottom line target. Then finance and accounting staff essentially distributed that bottom line out, typically based on historical figures, you know, sometimes based on relationships and politics too. They'll send that out to operating managers and essentially say to them, you have to meet this target. Those operating managers then will have little to say about the actual budgets themselves, and then as a result, they're not going to have much buy into them. Then down the line, when questioned over their, let's say, negative budget variances, operating managers can rightly claim, I have no idea where the budget came from, so I can't answer your question. The resulting tension and awkward hand wringing is often pretty common in this situation and can lead to the gee, I wish we had more accountability. Comments Budgeting processes that are much more interactive and which involve top level goal setting and bottom up dialogue and interactivity that will increase buy in and will decrease the after the fact bemoaning about results and performance. The change in this budgeting mindset then of course changes in the accompanying and supporting processes can spark an important shift among functional managers from a keeping the trains running on time only mindset to one that is much more performance driven and this can have an incredibly positive impact on the organizational culture. Thanks for listening. I hope you'll consider leaving a five star review on Apple Podcasts or your platform of choice that will help others find us here. My mission is to help empower organizations that matter by supporting those who lead them. Feel free to learn more about me and my work@redsailadvisors.com SA.